Morality Archives - Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University. Fri, 19 Sep 2025 21:38:52 +0000 en-US hourly 1 A Rhyme on Human Rights https://www.scottbradford.us/2022/06/28/a-rhyme-on-human-rights/ Tue, 28 Jun 2022 16:30:00 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=51050 It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes. Theodor Reik The chart above is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 license.It may be shared freely with appropriate attribution. More Information What Are Human Rights? The First Right: Life The Positive Good School Sixty-Three Million

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]]> Sixty-Three Million https://www.scottbradford.us/2022/06/27/sixty-three-million/ Mon, 27 Jun 2022 23:30:00 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=50869 Large numbers are hard to understand. For example, consider this number: 63,000,000. Sixty-three million. How can we put a number like that into perspective? One common technique is to put the number into the context of something more comprehensible. If you had 63 million 12-ounce bottles of Aquafina water, you could fill up almost nine […]

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]]> The Positive Good School https://www.scottbradford.us/2022/06/24/the-positive-good-school/ Fri, 24 Jun 2022 23:30:00 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=34224 Listen to Scott Bradford reading this essay. America’s original sin was chattel slavery. It was a reprehensible, inexcusable, indefensible institution that stained most of our first century as a nation and continued to have repercussions for much of a second century after that. In the 1770s and 1780s, as we were moving from colonial subjugation […]

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]]> The Freedom of Speech https://www.scottbradford.us/2021/07/02/the-freedom-of-speech/ Fri, 02 Jul 2021 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=42624 Let’s talk about “cancel culture” and free speech. A good starting point for this conversation is the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the freedoms of speech and press in the United States. The text has been “incorporated” by the Fourteenth Amendment and now applies equally to federal, state, and local governments (i.e., […]

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]]> Owning Plexus https://www.scottbradford.us/2018/05/01/owning-plexus/ Tue, 01 May 2018 12:00:45 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=28033 Manifesto of an Employee-Owner An Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) sounds great on paper, but how well does it work in practice? That depends on whether the company’s leaders embrace an ownership culture, trust their employee-owners, commit to big ideas, and make smart decisions. In 2009, Scott Bradford was an employee-owner at Plexus Scientific Corporation, […]

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]]> The Right (and Wrong) Side of History https://www.scottbradford.us/2018/03/05/the-right-and-wrong-side-of-history/ Tue, 06 Mar 2018 04:50:49 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=27821 Everybody wants to be on “the right side of history.” But here in the real world (what’s left of it), it is hard to tell in the moment which “side” will be viewed by our posterity as having been the “right side.” Humans are fallible. We misjudge. We misunderstand. We choose wrongly, and then we […]

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]]> A Letter to Governor Northam https://www.scottbradford.us/2018/01/13/a-letter-to-governor-northam/ Sun, 14 Jan 2018 00:00:37 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=27030 Following the November election, in which Ralph Northam (D) was elected to become the next Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I began composing a letter to him. Today, Northam was inaugurated . . . and I sent it to him via his official web site. If I receive any response, I will publish it at the end […]

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]]> Ten Tips to Avoid Getting Caught-Up in the Harassment Scandal https://www.scottbradford.us/2017/12/12/ten-tips-to-avoid-getting-caught-up-in-the-harassment-scandal/ Wed, 13 Dec 2017 02:07:09 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=27104 Over the last few weeks and months, countless celebrities and public figures have been caught-up in sexual harassment scandals. With accusations ranging from inappropriate comments and touching all the way up to sexual assault and rape, it increasingly seems like no corner of our society is immune from this kind of horrible behavior. Two years […]

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]]> Evil Exists https://www.scottbradford.us/2017/11/06/evil-exists/ Mon, 06 Nov 2017 18:00:04 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=26980 Every time somebody commits a crime with a gun, a certain crowd immediately begins to clamor for restrictions on firearms. They blame the crime on our “gun culture,” or on the widespread availability of firearms, or the types of firearms the law allows, or the process by which people buy firearms. This crowd, strangely, never […]

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]]> Never-Ending Hypocrisy in the Senate https://www.scottbradford.us/2017/03/31/never-ending-hypocrisy-in-the-senate/ Fri, 31 Mar 2017 19:54:10 +0000 https://www.scottbradford.us/?p=26085 For the eight years that George W. Bush (R) was president, Republicans complained bitterly about their Democratic counterparts in the Senate using the archaic rules like the filibuster to prevent votes on judicial nominations. The Republicans in the majority said that it was inappropriate for the Democratic minority to stop the Senate from doing its […]

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